“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” — T.S. Elliot, Choruses from ‘The Rock’, 1934 I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the most recent buzz word resonating throughout the blogosphere, big business, small business, consultant jargon and argot, LinkedIn, all [...]
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Charting Time and History of Sears
Working for the DIG or “Digital Innovation Group” holds a legacy filled with a history of “game-changing” and “disruptive” introduction to commerce throughout history by Sears Holdings Corporation. Since starting my work in this group at Sears, I have been mapping out on a timeline the history and trajectory of Sears as it maps onto [...]
IIT/ID Design Strategy Conference 5/12/2011 (Day 1) – Skip Walter
Skip Walter defines himself as a “serial entrepreneur” specializing in design and strategy. His “wicked problem” example centered around the discovery process in legal proceedings between Microsoft and various organizations. In short, the amount of paper documentation involved with many of Microsoft’s legal disputes were beginning to fill up entire floors of large office buildings. [...]
There are No Fish – Absolute vs. Relative Taxonomies in Online Retail
What if I told you there were no such thing as fish; they don’t exist, never did. You’d likely have a reaction similar to 18th and 19th century science readers who discovered that whales were not fish and bats weren’t birds. Suddenly, both were mammals like the household dog. Feels wrong doesn’t it? No fish?! [...]
BIG Data
The buzzword of the beginning of 2012 is “big data” when it comes to anyone in ecommerce. As storage and transfer/transmission costs decrease exponentially, the amount of data exchanged, processed and utilized seems to exponentially increase. There are many semantic meanings of the word data in the context of communications. In ecommerce, data is that [...]
Improving Teams – Four Dimensions of Relational Work
A recent article from the MindTools website provides some interesting insight into balancing interpersonal skills on teams. The authors ground their comments on the four dimensions of relational work identified by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop: influence, interpersonal facilitation, relational creativity, and team leadership. Influencers are great at negotiating and persuading. Interpersonal facilitators are strong [...]
What Ritz-Carlton Can Teach Us
Two posts in a row on management! As part of my management training “readings,” I’ve listened to a presentation given by Horst Shulze, former CEO of Ritz-Carlton. He’s got some interesting things to say about what organizations need to do to improve how they work. “Elimination of defects means becoming efficient. Cutting costs is not [...]
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